With a grand opening yesterday afternoon, The University of Tampa officially dedicated and named the new Technology Building, along with the adjoining building currently housing Graduate and Health Studies. The two buildings, linked by a sky bridge, will be named the Jenkins Health and Technology Building, in honor of Howard and Patricia Jenkins, who made a generous donation to the University to support student learning in both health and technology.
The gift and the renaming were announced by UT President Ronald L. Vaughn.
“The Jenkins have made such a significant and visible impact on UT. I am pleased that they have continued to be engaged and interested in supporting student learning,” Vaughn said.
The two six-story buildings, totaling almost 200,000 square feet, will comprise the Jenkins Health and Technology Building. The first building, currently known as the Graduate and Health Studies Building (GHS), was built in 2018 and houses UT’s programs in nursing and physician assistant medicine, as well as the Office of Graduate and Continuing Studies. It will now be known as the Jenkins Health Building.
The adjoining building is the new Jenkins Technology Building, which houses many academic programs related to information technology and features state-of-the-art labs and audio-visual equipment. Additionally, the building is the home of the Department of Communication and the Department of Film, Animation and New Media.
The building is also a hub for UT’s Information Technology and Security (ITS) department, which occupies most of the first floor with ITS tech support functionality and learning spaces. The building opened for campus use this fall.
In the new building, the ITS Service Desk, the Advanced Digital Literacy Center and a large computer lab will be easily accessible on the first floor. The second floor will include the Academic Success Center, a new Transfer Student Center, as well as Learning Resources/Academic Tutoring and Testing Centers. The third floor will host ITS offices, conference rooms, and an information technology training area that will host in-person and remote technology training sessions for faculty and staff, as well as customized individualized and group workshops. The fourth floor will feature classrooms, workspaces, a conference room, a training room and faculty/staff offices for the Department of Communication and the Department of Film, Animation and New Media.
The fifth floor will hold offices, labs and classrooms to support the Department of Information and Technology Management, and the cybersecurity program, which doubles the current space for its program and adds a dedicated area for a Telecom Center and a Security Operations Center (SOC). The SOC provides valuable learning opportunities for students in monitoring, detecting and responding to potential security incidents in a protected simulation environment.
The top floor of the Technology Building, the sixth, will house the Department of Computer Science, faculty offices, a conference room as well as two huddle spaces, study areas, four classrooms and three specialized computer science research lab spaces. A unique Makerspace will also provide an area where computer science students can creatively engineer their own computer or other technologic creations.
The sky bridge links floors four through six. Functional space inside the sky bridge includes 10 classrooms and the Jenkins Skyview Room – a multipurpose space for student presentations, programs and events that features superb views of campus and downtown Tampa.
In alignment with UT’s commitment to create a responsible, efficient, healthy and sustainable campus, both buildings are candidates for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification by the U.S. Green Building Council.
Original source can be found here.
